Feeding issue

[Meri Maura]

So I recently moved to uruguay and the previous owners of the property left 4 beautiful chickens, 2 girls 2 boys. The hens don't lay, despite looking to be a year old. I don't know how old they are, they are runts. The previous owner only fed them oats sometimes. Chicken pellets are hard to come by here, and I've been feeding them fruit scraps and about 1 cup of pellets I got from a feed store every morning. Any suggestions?

 

[Meri Maura]

@Kiki

 

[Percheron chick]

What are the pellets? What else is easy to come by?
Chickens were long kept prior to fortified feeds. I would be giving them fish and meat scraps, some fresh vegetable and fruit, masa (any corn products really)and whatever bugs they can find. I would suspect that they are much older than 1.

 

[sdm111]

Dry catfood, catfish pellets

 

[Ridgerunner]

Look around at what others in your situation are doing if you can. What breed are those chickens? Are they indigenous chickens that might be smaller than you expect? Many landrace chickens adopted to local conditions are relatively small compared to certain dual purpose breeds.

How are you managing them? Are they allowed to free range or do you have them locked up so they are totally dependent on what you feed them? How good is your forage? For thousands of years chickens have been kept where they free range and feed themselves by foraging. I grew up on one of those farms. The chickens were a barnyard mix, fairly small as barnyard mutts often are.

There is a lot I don't know about your situation, your goals, set-up, or management techniques. There are issues to managing them as many people have managed them over thousands of years, quality of forage and potential predator risk for example. I did not see anything alarming in your description of how the previous owners managed and fed them, sounds pretty familiar.

about 1 cup of pellets I got from a feed store every morning.

It sounds like you want to change how they were managed. How convenient is that feed store? What types of feed do they carry? You might chat with them to see if they can get what you might want.

The hens don't lay,

Are you sure? Are they hiding a nest on you? As you said you don't know how old they are but in Uruguay you should be at the height of the egg laying season.

 

[Meri Maura]

What are the pellets? What else is easy to come by?
Chickens were long kept prior to fortified feeds. I would be giving them fish and meat scraps, some fresh vegetable and fruit, masa (any corn products really)and whatever bugs they can find. I would suspect that they are much older than 1.

I think they're layer pellets

 

[Meri Maura]

Look around at what others in your situation are doing if you can. What breed are those chickens? Are they indigenous chickens that might be smaller than you expect? Many landrace chickens adopted to local conditions are relatively small compared to certain dual purpose breeds.

How are you managing them? Are they allowed to free range or do you have them locked up so they are totally dependent on what you feed them? How good is your forage? For thousands of years chickens have been kept where they free range and feed themselves by foraging. I grew up on one of those farms. The chickens were a barnyard mix, fairly small as barnyard mutts often are.

There is a lot I don't know about your situation, your goals, set-up, or management techniques. There are issues to managing them as many people have managed them over thousands of years, quality of forage and potential predator risk for example. I did not see anything alarming in your description of how the previous owners managed and fed them, sounds pretty familiar.


It sounds like you want to change how they were managed. How convenient is that feed store? What types of feed do they carry? You might chat with them to see if they can get what you might want.


Are you sure? Are they hiding a nest on you? As you said you don't know how old they are but in Uruguay you should be at the height of the egg laying season.

They are free ranged on 10 acres with 3 donkeys, flock of geese and a steer. There are two ponds. They have nests in their coop but I haven't received anything. The previous owners mentioned buying eggs from a local store. They are golden comets and blue mixes. I have started to water them regularly with hose water, something the previous owners never did. They sleep in an open air type coop which we are currently put roosting poles into. I don't really care about egg production, they're just my pets.